AuthorTopic: Alttp - Horn of Balance (Read 203556 times)

Just a quick question:Are the sideways bookcases in the attached screenshot distracting?I've added some space between them and the other bookcases, but I'm still doubting myself on this one. Outside input is welcome.

And here is the rest of the progress made last week.So I'm running quite behind on schedule to get a full demo out for NCFC. To cut some corners I'll be using placeholders enemies (for now), cut the Moldorm bossfight tweaking (for now) and push building the Mansion F1 rooms past the first october demo. The reason I still plan on releasing a demo october 1st is to allow anybody who want to help test the option to do so.

Sorry guys, no demo this week. I had planned to, but I don't want to release a dungeon with (still a few) completely barren rooms in it. It'd also break the dungeon order. Next weekend I'll be helping out familie but I'll likely be able to finish up in the week+weekend after.

Hi guys. Good news. It looks like I won't have to push the next demo any further past the last schedule (=okt 15th). The mansion level can now finally be played from start to finish and the last couple of days I have left can now into to tweaking the puzzles, room visuals, maskings and so on.

If anybody wants to help out once the demo is out then..

..please playtest the demo and report any issues found.I'll try my best to fix all feedback before the NCFC event. Most likely issues may be found within the mansion dungeon (as that is completely new) and the tiling of the older area's (as the entire game has been completely retiled these last few months.

..please record gameplay or a trailer to showcase during the NCFC.Given the limited time till the NCFC (and my lack of experience/talent on the matter) I had to set priorities and so I won't be coming around to doing this myself. I'll link your recordings directloy on the NCFC booth if you're interested in the views. (Should be a couple of hundred views depending on the quality).

Notes:- From the start of the game move right for a small intro cave, down for the new mansion dungeon and upwards for the older (harder) content- Beat both nothern dungeons to reach the game's credits

* Converted over to Gamemaker Studio 2(including: implementing new inherentance system, redoing all tiling, reordering all objectdepths, creating all new tilesets, rewriting all scripting, cleaning up (now) obselete scripting and other resources, documenting all variables used)

Weekly update:So I've been looking over the NCFC livestreams closely and I've made a list of things to fix. Expect an updated demo when I'm done (or post here if you want an earlier copy to help do more testing.

0.19.04 (3 november 2017)* Optimized/cut more resources (so less texture groups are used / performance should improve slightly)* Fixed some compiler tile layer warnings* Started work on overworld 2.0

0.19.05 (4 november 2017)* Digging effects are now drawn to tilelayers instead of large surfaces (improving performance when moving to/from large rooms; also gives better performance)* Additional scripting to deactive most enemies outside of current view (=big performance boost)* Reorganised some more resources* Fixed darkness issue encountered in debug area's

So I've finally handled all the feedback I gather from the NCFC. It's too late for today, soI'll likely release a patched download next weekend. Also, I started on an additional (tutorial) bossfight: Supreme Overlord Murray.

0.19.07 (17 november 2017)* Edited Goriya to be weak to bombs* Bombs now push back enemies further/longer* Edited hint about library in Heimgartner Mansion (+added sign to better indicate where that is and is not)* Tweaked enemy placement in Mansion slightly* Made it slightly easier to keep distance with soldier grunts* Fixed shield not working* Reworked puzzles in intro cave* Tweaked texture usage some more for another slight performance boost

0.19.08 (18 november 2017)* Started work on boss for the intro cave

0.19.09 (19 november 2017)* Fixes some missed visual glitches basement desert palace* Reorganised common variables enemy AI's* Made it impossible to enter the gauntlet area before getting the desert treasure* Fixed lock in bedroom scene in desert palace. (Finally was able to replicate it by getting uneven x coordinates)

Notes:- From the start of the game move right for a small intro cave, down for the new mansion dungeon and upwards for the older (harder) content- Beat both nothern dungeons to reach the game's credits

WeeklyBi weekly Tri weekly update:Progress has been relatively slow, but still ongoing. So there are basically three things going on with development right now:

1. A german student has offered to translate the game into German and possibly Russian. While the full game is still 2 years (fingers crossed ) from completion I agreed to this because it helps him as a translator and because the engine shouldn't be any worse off. The way I'm picturing it is that I could release all ingame texts in a seperate file later-on so people can translate it into other languages as well if they feel like it.

2. I got bored with the stuff I was working on in november and started work on a new dungeon: the underwater prison. Ultimately it will be placed somewhere between the soldier tombs and desert palace in terms of difficulty. (With the mansion being the 4th difficult). So far the tiling is mostly done, with the masking coming next. The dungeon is planned to introduce the following new mechanics: following NPC's and switches to raise/lower the water level. Given all that I hope to be able to release the results (along with the new overworld) in march.

3. I've expanded the HUD to display the context of the action button (like in OoT and beyond). Check the attached screenshot. It shouldn't be too obtrusive and can be disable through the option menu otherwise. I feel it's implementation can be improved further so if anybody is willing to help playtest it let me know for a new demo.

1. A german student has offered to translate the game into German and possibly Russian. While the full game is still 2 years (fingers crossed ) from completion I agreed to this because it helps him as a translator and because the engine shouldn't be any worse off. The way I'm picturing it is that I could release all ingame texts in a seperate file later-on so people can translate it into other languages as well if they feel like it.

0.19.10 (2 december 2017)* Improved shadow scripting performance* Reorganised textfiles some more* Made more progress on next dungeon (=water prison)* Fixed a few tiling issues in debug areas

0.19.11 (3 december 2017) PUBLIC SMALL RELEASE* Made more progress on next dungeon (=water prison)* Reorganised textfiles some more

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0.19.12 (9 december 2017)* Made more progress on next dungeon (=underwater prison)

0.19.13 (10-22 december 2017)* Made much more progress on underwater prison dungeon (tiling + design mostly done for now)* Made some more progress designing temp overworld replacement(s)

0.19.14 (23 december 2017)* Added visual representation for context sensitive action button and attack button to HUD (needs more work to finish)* Expanded options menu to allow the disablement of added buttons to HUD

0.19.17 (29 december 2017)* Made more progress working on underwater prison

0.19.18 (30 december 2017)* Made more progress working on underwater prison

0.19.19 (1 januari 2018)* Made lots of progress on underwater prison (various more rooms masked + various doors/switches/chests placed)* Game now allows the player to collect multiple bundles of bombs from chests without repeat intro text* HUD now also detects “open” action possibility

Just a quick question:Are the sideways bookcases in the attached screenshot distracting?I've added some space between them and the other bookcases, but I'm still doubting myself on this one. Outside input is welcome.

The bookcases aren't distracting. If anything, they add something new.

0.19.20 (6 januari 2018)* Fixed a long running visual glitch where, if you stop pushing and directly time to try to the sides, you may be shown pushing nothing* Started work on (water level) push switches (post screenshot)

So I've finally settled on a method for "raising water levels". Check the screenshot for an inbetween frame of what I'm talking about. Next I'll be adding some sound before implementing such watereffects all across the dungeon.

Next, I was playing around with some of the coding when I noticed opportunities to massively improve performance, so please enjoy those results in the next demo.

Finally, the German (and Russian) translations didn't pan out. It's fully dead, but I did write down the required reordening of ingame texts while waiting. Who know. Maybe I'll revisit the idea when the game is fully done.

0.19.24 (19 januari 2018)* Improved collisions while swimming in deep water* Redid setup for getting out of deep water via jump* Interaction ledge jumping and landing in deep water added* Tweaked jumping in the deep water from broken ladders

0.19.25 (20 januari 2018)* Cleaned up the coding a little regarding water object creation* Added water animated water flow from the wall

0.19.26 (26 januari 2018)* Loving the studio profiling options: The engine has been tweaked all over to achieve a whooping combined performance increase of 41% (while in the debug room)

The plan was to more or less finish raised water in the prison this weekend, but life and new ideas came up. Also I'm noticing the game drop below 60 fps quit frequently now (probably because my pc is slowly dying) so I'm really getting into code optimization again. For those that want to help out: I'll be releasing a new demo next weekend for feedback on framerates on other machines.

EDIT: The next demo won't contain actual new content; just some tweaks and engine optimizations as the new prison dungeon hasn't been connected to the overworld yet. Just mentioning it as to not dissappoint anybody.

0.19.31 (11 februari 2018)* Improved efficiency of darkness engine (for 6,7% overall performance improvement while stationairy in debug room)* Further improved prison dungeon tiling* Increased game performance in debug room by another 5% recoding various misc. Mechanics* Improved Anti-Faerie AI performance by about 30%* Further optimized performance for trees and enemy general AI if outside of the screen* Fixed boomerang not being able to fly over small outside holes in the ground* Improved performance snapdragon movement script

A started I planned to release an improved demo today so people could help test performance, but a small glitch in the boomerang's bouncing behaviour bothered me so much (because I couldn't find the cause) that I ultimatly ended up spending the better part of the day just rebuidling the entire bouncing mechanic from scratch (also improving performance for that script by about 60% so it's not all bad). It's all about that polish.

Expect the improved demo by the end of next weekend. Sorry about the delay for those looking forward to it.

0.19.32 (12 februari 2018)* Greatly reduced the use of (inefficient) view functions (that got in due to the Gamemaker migration)* Increased efficiency some more collision scripts* Tree drawing made more efficient

0.19.33 (13 februari 2018)* Replace more of the inefficient view functions from the gamemaker migration* Made more trees more efficient

0.19.34 (17 februari 2018)* Various more coding improvements to boost performance* Fixed tiling issue in the sewers* Fixed issue in blob AI; now correctly only chases you if close enough* Fixed collision magic powder vs anti-faerie